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10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan

1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser. As governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state up till then.” Meanwhile, state spending nearly doubled. As president, Reagan “raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,” including four times in just two years. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan “a dear friend,” told NPR, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration — I was there.” “Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan’s memoir. Reagan the anti-tax zealot is “false mythology,” Brinkley said.

2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit. During the Reagan years, the debt increased to nearly $3 trillion, “roughly three times as much as the first 80 years of the century had done altogether.” Reagan enacted a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously. Despite the conservative myth that tax cuts somehow increase revenue, the government went deeper into debt and Reagan had to raise taxes just a year after he enacted his tax cut. Despite ten more tax hikes on everything from gasoline to corporate income, Reagan was never able to get the deficit under control.

3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. Unemployment jumped to 10.8 percent after Reagan enacted his much-touted tax cut, and it took years for the rate to get back down to its previous level. Meanwhile, income inequality exploded. Despite the myth that Reagan presided over an era of unmatched economic boom for all Americans, Reagan disproportionately taxed the poor and middle class, but the economic growth of the 1980′s did little help them. “Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top have tripled or quadrupled,” the New York Times’ David Leonhardt noted.

4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously. Reagan promised “to move boldly, decisively, and quickly to control the runaway growth of federal spending,” but federal spending “ballooned” under Reagan. He bailed out Social Security in 1983 after attempting to privatize it, and set up a progressive taxation system to keep it funded into the future. He promised to cut government agencies like the Department of Energy and Education but ended up adding one of the largest — the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which today has a budget of nearly $90 billion and close to 300,000 employees. He also hiked defense spending by over $100 billion a year to a level not seen since the height of the Vietnam war.

5. Reagan did little to fight a woman’s right to chose. As governor of California in 1967, Reagan signed a bill to liberalize the state’s abortion laws that “resulted in more than a million abortions.” When Reagan ran for president, he advocated a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited all abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, but once in office, he “never seriously pursued” curbing choice.

6. Reagan was a “bellicose peacenik.” He wrote in his memoirs that “my dream…became a world free of nuclear weapons.” “This vision stemmed from the president’s belief that the biblical account of Armageddon prophesied nuclear war — and that apocalypse could be averted if everyone, especially the Soviets, eliminated nuclear weapons,” the Washington Monthly noted. And Reagan’s military buildup was meant to crush the Soviet Union, but “also to put the United States in a stronger position from which to establish effective arms control” for the the entire world — a vision acted out by Regean’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, when he became president.

7. Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. Reagan signed into law a bill that made any immigrant who had entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty. The bill was sold as a crackdown, but its tough sanctions on employers who hired undocumented immigrants were removed before final passage. The bill helped 3 million people and millions more family members gain American residency. It has since become a source of major embarrassment for conservatives.

8. Reagan illegally funneled weapons to Iran. Reagan and other senior U.S. officials secretly sold arms to officials in Iran, which was subject to a an arms embargo at the time, in exchange for American hostages. Some funds from the illegal arms sales also went to fund anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua — something Congress had already prohibited the administration from doing. When the deals went public, the Iran-Contra Affair, as it came to be know, was an enormous political scandal that forced several senior administration officials to resign.

9. Reagan vetoed a comprehensive anti-Apartheid act. which placed sanctions on South Africa and cut off all American trade with the country. Reagan’s veto was overridden by the Republican-controlled Senate. Reagan responded by saying “I deeply regret that Congress has seen fit to override my veto,” saying that the law “will not solve the serious problems that plague that country.”

10. Reagan helped create the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. Reagan fought a proxy war with the Soviet Union by training, arming, equipping, and funding Islamist mujahidin fighters in Afghanistan. Reagan funneled billions of dollars, along with top-secret intelligence and sophisticated weaponry to these fighters through the Pakistani intelligence service. The Talbian and Osama Bin Laden — a prominent mujahidin commander — emerged from these mujahidin groups Reagan helped create, and U.S. policy towards Pakistan remains strained because of the intelligence services’ close relations to these fighters. In fact, Reagan’s decision to continue the proxy war after the Soviets were willing to retreat played a direct role in Bin Laden’s ascendency.

Every president has some flaws. Obama has taken the deficit and national debt to unprecedented levels and will raise taxes as soon as he gets the opportunity. So, I'll still take Ronald Reagan over Obama (little Jimmy) any day.

The USA was absolutely not the only country that aided the mujahidin against the Russians. We just provided them with more advanced weaponry. Surrounding countries as pouring weapons and fighters into the region, just as they were when the russians were trying to establish a puppet govt. No one in that region wanted to see the soviets ruling afghanistan. The Obama admin is just digging us deeper into that shit hole. We are in the same predicament now that the Soviets were in the 80s. But, it seems like every president has to have his own signature war.

Every president has some flaws. Obama has taken the deficit and national debt to unprecedented levels and will raise taxes as soon as he gets the opportunity. So, I'll still take Ronald Reagan over Obama (little Jimmy) any day.

The USA was absolutely not the only country that aided the mujahidin against the Russians. We just provided them with more advanced weaponry. Surrounding countries as pouring weapons and fighters into the region, just as they were when the russians were trying to establish a puppet govt. No one in that region wanted to see the soviets ruling afghanistan. The Obama admin is just digging us deeper into that shit hole. We are in the same predicament now that the Soviets were in the 80s. But, it seems like every president has to have his own signature war.

I pretty much agree with this. And I think it's funny how everyone bases the economy off the President.

this is what we get for putting bush in office twice.obama can't fix this mess with one term or even 2 terms he can only hope to make up some ground.I already knew this stuff about ron.I know people who were in college during his term that are still paying off their loans because of his stuff.

I think the public is smoking the politi"crack" that the major disinformation centers are disseminating. The far left and the far right are the unthinking mobs that are used by the dis-informers to continue their dismantling of this nation. Relax everyone. There is nothing you can do about it. The entire world is going to shit. There are a hand full of politicrack dealers that will prosper and 90% of the rest of us will be left shaking in the corner combing the carpet for one last cumb of crack to support the crumbling world view. The other 10% will sit knowing it was going to shit for decades.

Obama has taken the deficit and national debt to unprecedented levels and will raise taxes as soon as he gets the opportunity. So, I'll still take Ronald Reagan over Obama (little Jimmy) any day.

100% bullshit! 80% is carryover from Bush and his retarded economic policies. one of the reasons why the decifit is so high is that tax receipts have been constantly lowered from both corporations and personal incomes since WWII..tax receipts are also reduced substantially during recessions, this is all US financial history 101.

but Gears wouldn't know this as he gets all his info from Faux news..how can someone with an MBA know absolutely nothing about the federal budget deficit and US economic history?

Last edited by LAM; 02-07-2011 at 11:19 AM.

William F. Buckley describes a conservative as, "someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop." - and then proceeds to drag civilization back to times best left in history's dungheap.

100% bullshit! 80% is carryover from Bush and his retarded economic policies. one of the reasons why the decifit is so high is that tax receipts have been constantly lowered from both corporations and personal incomes since WWII..tax receipts are also reduced substantially during recessions, this is all US financial history 101.

but Gears wouldn't know this as he gets all his info from Faux news..how can someone with an MBA know absolutely nothing about the federal budget deficit and US economic history?

The link to the report below from the Census Burueau shows that the median household income actually feel from 1999-2009. I wonder who was president then? those that worked on Wall street saw significant gains in income during those years.